Going Live! - June 22, 2003

On June 22nd in the evening we all congregated in the Welcome Area (Ahern or Morris I imagine) for the Going Live party. The Lindens constructed a traveling, glittering ball (a la Times Square New Years ball), we all drank and cheered and waved our sparklers.

Philip Linden addressed the crowd, it was a very exciting evening.

I am the avatar in the lower right with a blue shirt standing next to the fellow with a sparkler in his hand.

AND the biggest news was that 2 days later, June 24th, Garth Fairlight signed into Second Life for the first time. He was a very experienced avatar having been on Cybertown.com for about 2 years, and he had run an Ultima Online shard using Sphereserver for a year and a half in the UK. He had been looking for a virtual world where he could build and script and not have to kill monsters to level up.

He bought a parcel in DeHaro too and built his own tent.


But we never ran into each other there. He lived in London so he waited up all night for scripting classes because there was never anyone online in his daytime. Later he bought land in Varney and built his house, which is still available in our Lighthouse Store!


We didn't meet till the 4th of July, but more about that later

Chat at you all later.........Pituca

The beginnings of Americana......

If you notice in the picture of my land in DeHaro you can see an island in the middle of the little lake. Char Linden used to host triva games in the chat ring there. We had a lot of fun, Kanker Greenacre was one of the fastest to answer! There were a lot of fun Linden hosted events in those days.

I attended quite a few classes too, scripting, building etc etc. I remember that Bob Bunderfield, Chip Midnight and Shadow Weaver were among the teachers. Stampshady Grimm had a great texture palace I used to frequent.

Sometime at the beginning of June the Lindens announced a contest to have full use of a sim for a group venture. It sounded like an amazing experiment so I went looking for a group to join. A group had to have at least 20 members to qualify for inclusion in the contest. I joined a group headed by Candie Apple, we met in her lavish home on the bluff in Clementina just below the Governor's Mansion and facing the endless ocean. Candy was well known for her classes on making wings and other assorted things. But I had a hard time understanding her vision for the group and ended up not staying in it.

I then joined the group Americana founded by George Busch, among the early members in Beta were Ramon Kothari, Tracey Kato, Jon VonLenard, Dionysius Starseeker, CrowCatcher Valen, Sinclair Valen, Fleabite Beach, Sassy Apple, Oda VonLenard, Sinatra Cartier, Bososuko Kato, Fey Brightwillow, Horatio Horn and of course me.




This is a picture of the 'layout' meeting to decide what was going where in the sim. Fleabite Beach is the cat with the wings, next to her on her left is Ramon Kothari. Bonecrusher Slate is the 'Hulk'. I can't tell who the others are. We were granted exclusive rights to the Blue sim for a number of days prior to that section of the continent being stitched to the mainland.

The new sims north of Boardman rose from the sea on or about June 19th of 2003. It was quite a sight as a large crowd gathered in Boardman and DeHaro to see it, and to make the mad dash to buy in the new lands!

chat at you later............Pituca

In the Beginning....

I have wanted to have a photoblog for a long time so let's see how this one works out! I hope I don't get too busy or too lazy to write what I really want to.

Check out this early picture of me right after coming to SL back in May 2003. I was so klutzy and didn't know how to take a picture of myself, not being technically apt I didn't know how turn myself around and face the camera! I am almost too embarrassed to post the pic!

I had been spending my spare time playing canasta on Yahoo and bridge on MSN. I resisted attempts by my new online friends to join them in RPGs. I didn't want to be anything but myself.

The life changing (for me) article appeared in Slate.com . "The game's makers, the tiny San Francisco startup Linden Lab, say the game is surprisingly popular with middle-aged women, who are less inclined to quest-oriented swordplay than to designing each other's dream homes. This may be the start of a new game genre: First person non-shooters for Mom."

I signed up right away and spent at least 3 days on the Orientation Island trying to figure everything out. I only saw one other person in the time I spent, 240z Strutt was his name. I said hi a couple of times but he never answered. He didn't last in SL I think as I never saw him in world.

I wandered around the grid (there were only about 33 sims in those days.). SL was only open a few hours a day, if I remember correctly it was from noon to 10pm by the time I came. I really wanted to buy some land but all I could find was owned by others or 'public land'. Took me over two weeks to figure out that 'public land' was for us to buy and not parkland. I eventually ended up buying a parcel in DeHaro which at the time was restricted to cabins and tents. with lots of space between the parcels.

Joan Nomad and Harald Nomad were my neighbors and they helped me rotate and place my newbie cabin.

That's me finally settled in and with a few pieces of furniture too!

Chat at you all later................... Pituca